


The Neuroscience of Vessels

by Luciel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, Gen, Meta, Swan Song, True Vessels, Vessels, neuroscience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-08 00:36:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luciel/pseuds/Luciel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vessels are a weird thing and because of the recent failure to address two notable examples I thought it might be time for me to talk about my theories on the relationship between angels and the people’s bodies they sometimes inhabit.</p><p>So let’s talk about the neuroscience of angelic possession, shall we?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Neuroscience of Vessels

As you might know, an important part of neural development over the course of the life of a brain-owning creature is neuroplasticity: the ability of the brain to restructure itself in response to things a person does/thinks a lot, and to prune parts of itself that aren’t used much. People who start playing the violin early and regularly, for example, have a larger area devoted to sensation and motor control in the fingers because they need to be able to feel and move their hands more accurately than most people do. This is true for most brain functions: if you practice anything enough, the number of connections between the associated brain cells will grow, and the strength of response when the connections are activated will be greater. 

This is a big deal because it is essentially the physical basis of the way people think. If your brain has restructured itself to accommodate the situations it encounters and the way you have dealt with them in the past, then you are going to be better at dealing with those things in those ways than someone who never encountered them or reacted to them before. It’s basically like how someone who lifts weights is going to be better at lifting heavy things than someone who runs, who is going to be better at tasks that require good cardiovascular function.

We know that angels occupy their vessels in order to use the body to the advantage of the angel. The angel can influence the strength and properties of the body to an extent, but can’t completely change it to the point that a child vessel becomes an adult or a male becomes female. They are really inserting themselves into a preexisting framework that they have to adapt to.

The brain is part of the body, so it should work the same way.

Neuroscience can’t really account for the basis of consciousness, so let’s assume that at least in the show consciousness is rooted in something non-physical, but that uses the physical structure of the brain to operate. So a human’ consciousness pushes itself through the neural networks that have grown and changed over the person’s lifetime. When an angel’s consciousness takes over, it does the same thing. 

It is easier for the consciousness, be it human or angelic, to use a well-used pathway than a neglected one. Therefore, it seems probable that angels would be inclined to take vessels whose mental processes are somewhat similar to theirs. It would be possible for the angel to function well enough in a vessel that thinks very differently from the angel, but it would probably be annoying because the brain is structured incorrectly. The same principle as bigger physical structures applies: an angel CAN use a small or weak body and use its angelic strength, but it is not ideal (Castiel taking on Jimmy Novak’s daughter body would have been awkward partly for this reason). The angel would likely have to force its consciousness through minimally used pathways in order to think properly. 

That’s fine for the angel. That might be problematic for the vessel, once vacated. The force the angel uses to force neural connections to work with more strength than they ever have before would probably do something bizarre to the brain. Raphael’s first vacated vessel was pretty much vegetative, and this could be why. His consciousness could no longer figure out how to operate with the hugely altered brain the archangel left him with. Jimmy was fine, but it’s also the case that Castiel isn’t an archangel and therefore likely couldn’t do the same amount of damage/alteration that Raphael could.

The hypothesis that Dean would be vegetative after Michael left him is untested and I’m disinclined to take it too seriously. To my knowledge it was never stated that Raphael Vessel #1 was Raphael’s true vessel anyway, so the archangel probably had a more intense effect on him that Michael would have had on Dean.

That brings us nicely to the topic of archangels and their true vessels, actually. How does any of this work for that situation? How is one human body in all of everything assigned to each archangel? 

They are certainly matched by bloodline, as we see with Sam and Dean as Lucifer and Michael’s true vessels. That narrows things down: if an archangel gets one true vessel not out of ALL of humanity but out of the subset of humans, there are fewer to choose from. 

They also seem to be matched by personality and situation, though, which makes sense. Sam and Lucifer, and Dean and Michael have a number of personality traits and ways of thinking in common, even discounting their external relationships. I took the liberty of assigning them Jungian personality types, and the vessel matches his archangel relatively well in both cases. Adding their interactions with their brothers and fathers only strengthens the similarities. 

Since humanity began, chains of events (in-show fate, probably) made it inevitable that there would eventually be two siblings who are in themselves and in their context very much like Lucifer and Michael. There have probably been several such pairs, but the bloodline thing narrows it down to Sam and Dean. Lucifer and Michael would find it fairly easy to take over the bodies of these two men because their brains are already set up for the same sort of functions as the archangels would want to use. Sam and Dean did all the work throughout their lives of structuring their brains so that the archangels would be able to use them with minimal corrective effort. 

That’s why they are the true vessels of these particular angels, and that’s part of why it’s so important for the angels to be accepted by their appropriate vessels. When you have to go to war against a worthy opponent, you don’t want faulty equipment. You want your armor and weapons to be as perfectly fitted as possible. Sam and Dean are as close to Lucifer and Michael’s perfect bodies, down to the neurons, as anyone was likely ever to be.

This also works with the idea that Lucifer helped Sam drag both of them, along with Michael and Adam, down into the cage (I have no link, sorry). I’ve seen the theory that Lucifer intentionally gave Sam control, or that Lucifer himself was purposefully the one doing it the whole time. I’m resistant to that because I don’t think Lucifer alone would have been particularly interested in returning to the cage regardless of the other factors in play, but I do think he had an important role in the matter. I’m convinced, watching Jared during the flashbacks to Sam’s childhood, that his expressions are ones that Lucifer uses. Sam’s face doesn’t do the things Jared’s does in that scene. Sam shouldn’t have been able to pull Michael down alone. Honestly, Sam shouldn’t have been able to overpower Lucifer entirely like that. It can’t have just been the power of Sam’s nostalgia (*gag*); Lucifer had to have played a part. But if it wasn’t Lucifer’s indulgence of Sam’s wishes or some weird self-defeatism, why would he have done it?

Well, if they’re both using the same neural networks, and they fit as a perfect human/archangel unit, there might be some blurring of lines where identity is concerned. I am adamantly in favor of the notion that it is not ideal to completely discard the human once the angel takes the vessel (why would God, who supposedly loves humanity, want that? Why would Lucifer keep Sam’s consciousness around and try so hard to convince him that he was right unless there was some benefit to having both working together? I could elaborate, but I won’t here). So Lucifer was using Sam’s brain to think at the same time that Sam was using his brain to think. Lucifer did not lock Sam away, so he probably got some of whatever Sam was feeling and thinking and remembering. He took on Sam’s memory when he made the decision to keep Sam around and not differentiate himself entirely from the human, so if the impala triggered Sam to remember his childhood, Lucifer would have gotten those memories too. If Sam felt something as a result, Lucifer would have felt it too. I think it is entirely possible that Lucifer received these memories and feelings because Sam activated the corresponding neural circuits, and momentarily had difficulty distinguishing his identity and goals from Sam’s. Sam’s consciousness wanted to jump into the cage, and that caused certain patterns of neurons firing, which affected Lucifer’s consciousness. Sam sent the signal to jump, but Lucifer enacted it, thinking at that moment, when he was a blend of himself and Sam, that that was what he wanted too.


End file.
